A Patriotic Salute to American Racing

This is what American racing looks like.

As we prepare to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, drivers, collectors, and car owners from more than 30 states will bring their cars, crews, families, and stories to Lime Rock Park for Historic Festival 44. They come from every corner of this great nation to race in the hills of Connecticut, the Constitution State, where the early American idea of written self-government helped shape the freedoms we celebrate today.

And there is something deeply American about that.

The spirit of historic racing was built by barnstormers, mechanics, engineers, risk-takers, and believers in Yankee ingenuity. They built what they could not buy. They fixed what they broke. They crossed the country chasing speed, competition, glory, and the simple question every racer still asks: how fast can we go?

Today’s Historic Festival participants carry that spirit forward. They preserve the cars, the stories, the sound, and the courage of the men and women who made this sport part of America’s soul.

On this July 4th weekend, as we look ahead to America’s 250th, we also pause to honor the veterans who fought and died for our freedom. Because of their sacrifice, we can gather with family, friends, competitors, and fans to celebrate the country we love and the sport that brings us together.

Historic Festival 44 will salute American racing with Trans Am, American muscle, ARCA specials, and drivers from across the nation. And when they arrive, they do more than fill the paddock. They fill our restaurants, inns, hotels, shops, and small towns, bringing energy and pride to the entire Northwest Corner.

Labor Day Weekend, Lime Rock Park becomes the East Coast home of vintage racing and a celebration of history, freedom, community, the American spirit, and the 250th birthday of the greatest country in the world.Click here to join us for Historic Festival 44

Yankee Ingenuity at the Climb to the Clouds

The Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) was never short on imagination. These were Specials in the truest sense — built by hand, improved in the garage, and driven by racers who believed the next solution was usually somewhere in the toolbox.

The Ford A Special of Frank Griswold and Lou McMillen is one of those stories. In 1937, McMillen took it overseas to Shelsley Walsh, becoming the first American driver in an American car to run the famous British hillclimb. A year later, the same car went to Mount Washington for the legendary “Climb to the Clouds.”

With rubber chains on the rear wheels and a block of dry ice in front of the radiator, the Ford A Special finished third fastest behind two other ARCA greats: Lem Ladd’s Old Gray Mare and George Rand’s Ford-Amilcar Special.

All three cars will be part of a major ARCA display at Lime Rock Park for Historic Festival 44, September 3–7, with select ARCA specials also returning to the track where they belong.

This is ARCA. This is Yankee ingenuity. This is American racing.Click here to join us for Historic Festival 44

Sharon’s Own Sam Posey: An American Life at Speed

On May 30, 1969, while the racing world looked west to Indianapolis, 25-year-old Sam Posey came home to Lime Rock Park and won the Trans Am race in Peter Revson’s #1 Shelby-prepared Ford Mustang Boss 302.

Posey was supposed to be chasing the Indy 500 dream, but he had been barred from Indianapolis for being too young. Revson, Parnelli Jones, and George Follmer were at Indy chasing money, fame, and immortality. Posey was in Connecticut, in a Ford Mustang, winning at the track that helped shape him.

That is a Lime Rock story. And an American one.

Trans Am was American muscle at full song. Mustang. Camaro. Challenger. Javelin. Firebird. What fans saw on track was tied directly to what they saw in showrooms, driveways, and on Main Street. It was racing that helped sell America on performance.

Historic Trans Am brings that era back to life with original cars from the golden age of the series — the kind of machines driven by Posey, Parnelli Jones, Dan Gurney, Mark Donohue, George Follmer, Jim Hall, and the heroes who made 1970 one of the greatest seasons in American road racing history. These are not museum pieces masquerading as race cars. They are real Trans Am cars, coming back to Lime Rock Park, one of the road courses that helped define the series.

For Posey, that history is personal. He grew up in nearby Sharon, Connecticut. His first racing lessons came from neighbor John Fitch, one of Lime Rock’s founders, a World War II fighter pilot, former prisoner of war, Purple Heart recipient, and a Legend of Lime Rock inducted alongside Sam in 2025.

Posey became one of America’s great racing talents — Trans Am, Indy cars, the Indianapolis 500, Le Mans, Sebring, Formula One, NASCAR, and one of the great voices of motorsports television. But Sam was never just a driver. He is an American Renaissance man: racer, commentator, author, artist, architect, and member of the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.

His story also carries the weight of sacrifice. His father, Lt. Samuel Felton Posey Jr., was killed at Okinawa when a kamikaze struck the USS Henrico. His remains were never recovered. On a weekend built around American pride, freedom, and history, that part of Sam’s story matters.

In 2013, Skip Barber named Lime Rock’s front straight the Sam Posey Straight. In 2025, he selected Posey to be the first Legend of Lime Rock. Fans can read his marker beside the Skip Barber Tower during Historic Festival 44, where Posey plans to attend and see his Autodynamics Dodge Challenger compete against a field of original Trans Am cars.

Come hear the cars that sold America on performance. Come see the machines that made Trans Am legendary. Come celebrate a hometown hero, a Trans Am legend, and an American life at speed.Click here to join us for Historic Festival 44

A Revolutionary Salute at Historic Festival 44

Members of the Connecticut Line and the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution will join Saturday’s pre-race ceremonies with a patriotic musket three volley salute, spend the day visiting with fans, and bring Connecticut’s Revolutionary War history to life. Grab a selfie with a Patriot, hear the stories, and help us celebrate the freedom and American spirit at the heart of this year’s Festival.